Nonconformists

 “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” Juan Ramón Jiménez (below)

Ray Bradbury used the above Jiménez quotation as the epigraph for Fahrenheit 451 (1953), about a future authoritarian regime that burns all books (the title refers to the temperature in which they catch fire).  Bradbury was not only concerned about book-burning during the Red Scare hysteria but worried that the mass media conditioned people to become uninterested in literature.

In the hallway of IUN’s library/conference center Corey Hagelberg and Samuel A. Love put together a window exhibit displaying Calumet Regional Archives holdings of poetry books and magazines, including volumes by John Sheehan and William Buckley and issues of IUN’s award-winning Spirits literary magazine in connection with their “Gary Voices” project, funded by Legacy Foundation.  They are organizing poetry writing workshops and are soliciting contributors to submit a line for what they call a “public poem” about the city of Gary.

Preparing for a talk to a “Gary Voices” poetry team about my research into the social history of the Calumet Region, I took a close look at one of my favorite poems, James Hazard’s “Parents in Whiting, Indiana” and found a reference to Nobel Laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881-1956). Jiménez’s poem “Oceans,” published in “News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness,” edited by Robert Bly, brings to mind my friend Tom Orr’s sailboat being struck and sunk by a submarine off the coast of Spain:

  I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
                    And nothing
happens! Nothing...Silence...Waves...

    --Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

Bly translated Jiménez’s “I Am Not I” for the anthology “The Winged Energy of Delight” (2005):

     I am not I.
               I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.

James Hazard 

“Parents in Whiting, Indiana” is about James Hazard's immigrant parents, who had a tumultuous relationship, exacerbated by drinking.  One night, Hazard wrote, “my parents came in slugging each other.  He towered, drunk and breathing through his nose, told me I’d have to be the man of the house now and gave me money.  I was shaking in my pj’s and my mother blamed him, which seemed about half right to this brand new man of the house.”  He and his sister, Hazard’s poem concludes, “hatched fantasies us dispossessed and dismembered in goddam Whiting where we’d been given false names and left on an unlucky doorstep with grownups who locked the door and loved us and made our lives so dangerous.”

Steel Shavings, volume 46, arrived from my new printer, The Papers, Inc.  It looks great and contains two of my favorite poems, Robert Buzecky’s “Steel City, Stone City” and William Buckley’s “Night Shift,” the latter about rollerbladers circling Crown Point courthouse while “cop cars cooled their engines by the Triple Play Saloon.”  My “Editor’s Note” opens with poet John Sheehan’s remark that: “Between wisdom and folly ain’t much difference, and when we are not afraid to be fools could be when we’re wise.” 

Over the years, the content of Steel Shavings issues has varied, but the emphasis has remained the social history of Northwest Indiana and featured work by IUN students, most recently journals and oral histories.  Volume 46 includes papers Steve McShane’s students wrote about teenagers coming of age during the 1980s. The next issue will include memories of the 1990s, including this paper by Karl Lugar, who interviewed Guy Rubalcaba, a Mexican-American who grew up in the Black Oak area of Gary and attended Grissom Elementary, Lake Ridge middle school, and Calumet High School. 

Guy Rubalcaba on guitar and cycle

Lugar wrote:

In school Guy was subject of daily bullying as he did not subscribe to the “grunge fashion” of the day.  After ignoring his tormenters to no avail, he did fight back on one occasion, and the bullies moved on to other targets of opportunity.  Guy’s favorite teacher, Mr. Joe Portman, grew up “dirt poor” and sympathized with kids in similar circumstances. He delivered food baskets to the community, while serving as the school’s work-study coordinator and truant officer.

Guy received a hand-me-down 1987 Chevrolet Monte Carlo from his brother, his first of many.   Once Guy received his driver’s license, he liked to hang out weekends at Johnsen’s Blue Top Drive-In in Highland.  It was there that he learned of the infamous Cline Avenue drag racing scene, which he became a part of, learning that not only must a car be fast but it must be handled well to win.   Gus and his father spent many hours in his dad’s auto body shop repairing and repainting cars. Some were for customers; others were resold. His mother worked in the steel mill and instilled in Guy the value of hard work and self-motivational skills.

              Guy’s love for music came from his father, who played Stevie Ray Vaughn, Otis Redding, and other rock and soul music in the body shop. Guy played guitar, starting at age five, and secured an audition for his band at the high school talent show.  Unfortunately, Calumet's assistant principal suspended one of the members for tardiness the day before the audition, ruining their chances. Guy later formed “Voodoo Prophecy” and toured the Chicago “Rock Box” bar scene. He also started a record label and signed several artists before tiring of the scene.  

              Guy has a multifaceted personality that is like removing layers from an onion: each is unique and unveils a different side of him. He was married briefly and is devoted to his two kids.  He has never taken drugs, or consumed alcohol, as he witnessed what those did to other peoples’ lives and wanted to avoid becoming a statistic.  Since the nineties, his life has taken wild turns that led to his becoming manager of a gentlemen’s club. 

in foreground, Boricuas Phil Vera and Larry Ramirez (holding shoes); Below, Tom Crean in loss to Wisconsin

At Hobart Lanes, after observing that my ball was not carrying, Gene Clifford gave me a couple tips and I finished with games of 151 and 183.  Nearby, Delia’s uncles’ team, the Boricuas (meaning Puerto Ricans, especially those living in the U.S), were wearing green “Irish” shirts for good luck.  Folks were discussing the ouster of IU basketball coach Tom Crean after a very disappointing season, as well as news reports that an IUN women’s volleyball coach had been fired and charged with sexual battery. According to published reports of the criminal complaint, the former coach at Bishop Noll, hired a year ago and not on IUN’s faculty, got in a play-fight with a 17-year-old referee, first smacking her on the butt and then kissing her against her will.  Stupid move and bad for the university’s reputation! 

 David Levine view of TR

In a New York Review of Books essay praising Stephen Kinzer’s “The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire,” Jackson Lears wrote about America's continuing legacy of imperialism:

         The protection of foreign investment remained wrapped in the rhetoric of exceptionalism, which intensified after the United States emerged from World War II as the most powerful country on the planet.  Throughout the cold war and its successor, the war on terror, the exceptionalist creed maintained the international double standard – the willingness to pursue policies deemed intolerable elsewhere, the inability to imagine how Americans might react were other nations to behave as the United States does.

         The True Flag captures the tragic impact of American hubris: the concentration of unchecked power in the executive branch, the corrosive impact of secrecy ion public debate, the insulation of decision-making in unapproachable bureaucratic hierarchies [with] catastrophic consequences, from the counterinsurgency campaigns in the Philippines and Vietnam to the chaos arising from “regime change” in Iraq and Libya.

Persistence

“Continuous, unflagging effort, persistence, and determination will win.  Let not the man [or woman] be discouraged who has these.”  James Whitcomb Riley

 James Whitcomb Riley stamp, issued 1940

On the Editor’s Page of Traces Ray Boomhower discusses 1968 Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy’s unsuccessful effort to bond with Hoosiers during the Democratic primary season.  In fact, he disparaged one of Indiana’s most iconic figures, poet James Whitcomb Riley, a good friend of socialist Eugene V. Debs and most famous for children’s poems such as “Little Orphan Annie.”  Eugene McCarthy was a cold fish who team-taught an American Studies course I took at the University of Maryland.  I was excited at the prospect, but he was uncomfortable interacting with my generation and a snob.  I’ve heard that when McCarthy volunteers canvassed the Calumet Region, some voters confused him with anti-Communist demagogue Joseph McCarthy.  If people seemed to like Joe McCarthy, the volunteers allegedly were told, then don’t set them straight.

The lead Traces article by Roger Mitchell about Hoosier poet Jean Garrigue strangely contains none of her compositions.  Here’s lines from one I like, entitled “Some Nonsense for the Cats and Wolves”:

“My cat peed in the coalbin, why?

The coal will smell of whitefish when it lights

And mildest milk and small long bones

Will snatch a smoke to saunter through the skies.”

My favorite Hoosier poet is Regionite James Hazard, whose “A Girl from Connecticut Visited Whiting, Indiana,” appears in his collection “New Year’s Eve in Whiting, Indiana.”  Here’s the first and last verses.

“Appalled, she saw the whole bristling horizon across the marshes

smoking, flaming with oil refineries.  I said, “That’s Whiting.”

Later, safe in Evanston, she said, “People are so ugly

there.  She meant how they look, so many arms and legs given

away for factory wages, and lumpy Slovak faces that don’t

hide a thing shift-work has pulled on them.

Years later, when we hated each other, she said

there was something always frightening in me, something

ugly, not lovely, not nice.  She went back east.  I stayed

out here with the Slovaks to read their faces, to reach

for the tender ghost that fluttered like a pulse in love

inside the empty workshirt sleeve.”

A nice lady at Marshalls Time Shop in Chesterton put a new battery in my watch for next to nothing.  On the wall was a framed article about a man who had been a longtime jeweler in Whiting.  I bet he was the proprietor’s father or grandfather.  In addition to the plentiful mill jobs, Region cities once featured hundreds of small shops that provided opportunities for skilled craftsmen.

Patricia Adler, a popular professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is leaving her tenured position after being ordered to cease giving her lecture on prostitution in a Sexual Deviance class that typically contains 500 students.  In the past a teaching assistant played a sex industry worker and answered questions about risks, types of services, costs, and whatever else students wanted to know.  Adler received a standing ovation when she announced her decision.  A petition drive will hopefully pressure the administration into retracting its order.

Ryan Shelton, above, walked through the cafeteria while I was having lunch with Beth LaDuke, and I told him how much I enjoyed Monday’s Post-Trib article entitled, “Women’s Basketball: Ryan Shelton has built IUN program from ground up.”  He said he had hoped it would have been more about his former players, but he credited Erica Barron and Sharon Houston for the program’s success.  Seven years ago, only six players were on the team, and Ryan was ready to cancel the season when Erica talked him out of it.  The Lady Redhawks went 0-24, including a 100-point blowout, but, meanwhile, Ryan recruited players, including future NAIA All-American Sharon Houston, and won 17 games the following season.  Houston, now playing professionally in Turkey, said of Shelton: “From the very first day I met him I knew that he had a heart of gold.  He was so nice and passionate about what he was trying to do for the women’s program at IUN.”

Before Anne Balay took off for Europe, I suggested that she have students prepare papers for a spring A and S conference session entitled, “The Two Houses: Critiques of “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros and “The House You Pass on the Way” by Jacqueline Woodson.  Both are coming-of-age Young Adult novels about young teenagers searching for identity.   One is a sensitive evocation of a black girl’s first (same-sex) crush, the other a gritty tale of a Latina who is sexually assaulted and determined to escape a hostile environment.  The latter the entire campus community has been encouraged to read.  The one teacher who assigned Woodson’s novel was criticized for doing so and denied tenure.

I wish a Latina would write a compelling memoir about growing up in the Region.  In my Nineties Shavings I published Sandra Avila’s account of being an eighth grader at Hammond Eggers whose best friend was Amelia.   She wrote: “Our houses smelled like tortillas, our parents spoke little English, and they were both very strict.  We were not even allowed to look at a guy.”  Even so, they secretly began dating Daniel and Phil.  Amelia continued: “One time I turned off all the (telephone) ringers in my house and my dad thought there was something wrong so he called the phone company.  Another time I was at Amelia’s house when Phil came over on his scooter and her mom came out.  To avoid getting in trouble we told her he was the paperboy.  On Valentine’s Day Daniel bought me a dozen roses and some balloons.  I had to pop all the balloons and squeeze the flowers in my backpack to avoid getting in trouble.  Daniel was my first love and Phil Amelia’s first love.”

Alissa emailed me about an oral history collection at Grand Valley State about a Young Lords chapter active in the late 1960s in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.  Founder Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez now works in Michigan as a gang and youth counselor and must have a connection to GVSU.  My first published book, “The Enduring Ghetto,” co-edited with David Goldfield, contained an article by José Yglésias entitled “Right On with the Young Lords.”  In an introduction we wrote that it “describes the work of a revolutionary street organization in turning the destructive forces of the ghetto to constructive purposes.  In battling apathy, hostility, ridicule, and an inert New York bureaucracy, the Young Lords used tactics ranging from blustering publicity gimmicks and rhetorical education campaigns to practical lobbying techniques and breakfast programs for the young.”

Jonathyne Briggs, out east doing research, posted a photo, entitled “Hello, Mother ship.”  He’s in front of his publisher’s building.  Miranda posted a hilarious Christmas photo on Facebook, eliciting a comment from Tony Panepinto, who pitched on Phil and Dave’s Little League team.  We attended his wedding but haven’t heard from him in 20 years.  His dad Vince, a building trades union leader, was an unforgettable character.  Tony and I are now Facebook friends.  Nephew Bob wrote: “Facebook is a funny thing.  I avoided it for years thinking it was lame, but as I began using it to promote a brand, I became more involved with it.  The truth is I like it.  Connecting with people, many of whom I wasn’t all that close with, has been a real treat.”

 above, Michigan Lanes; below, John Panepinto

This year’s South Shore honorees are actress Betsy Palmer, an East Chicago native best known for her role of evil Mrs. Voorhees in the “Friday the 13th” movies.  Earlier she was a regular on NBC’s “Today” and the CBS game show “I’ve Got a Secret.”  The other honoree, La Porte native Edward A. Rumley (1882-1964), created the Rumley OIL Pull Tractor, founded the Interlaken School that emphasized learning-through-doing, and was publisher and editor of the New York Evening Mail a century ago.  He was a terrible businessman, however, and all his ventures ultimately failed.

For several years now, on orders from the administration, the library staff obtained store-bought food for their holiday celebration and stayed in the building rather than go to a restaurant.  Veterans joked about the time two people got so rowdy at Red Lobster that they were asked to leave, and when they put up a fuss, Merrillville cops were called to the scene.

I ate so much at the library holiday lunch that I only needed yogurt and an apple before bowling.  Since the library closed at 5, I went to the second floor of Hawthorn, picked up some papers at the History department office, and ate by the vending machines.  Beth LaDuke was getting off work then and joined me.   The Engineers won all three games against a team called Town Drunks.  I was disappointed their team captain, Joe Piunti, sat  out, but two of his sons bowled, as did affable Chris Lugo.  I bowled above average, Mel and Robbie were steady all evening, and John and Dick each had one good game when we needed them to come through.  A big hug from Shannon McCann made the night complete.